


Sword and Pen

by vtn



Category: Madrigal - Rush (Song)
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 15:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laetitia is a born warrior, while her twin brother Michael is a religious scholar. Over the years, despite their diverging paths in life, the two siblings find solace in each other’s friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sword and Pen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hhertzof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhertzof/gifts).



> I’m so thrilled that someone requested Rush for this exchange! They’re one of my favorite bands, and their songs have so many stories to tell. I hope you enjoy my take on the lyrics of “Madrigal”.
> 
> Many thanks to my anonymous beta for the helpful edits!

Ever since Laetitia the miller’s daughter was very young, she loved to invent stories to tell her twin brother. She would act out all the parts, with sticks and paper crowns and old linens as props and costumes. Waging battles against gryphon and dragon alike (an old tomcat and a menacing-looking thorn bush, respectively), she led imaginary armies to conquer and rule new lands.

Michael loved to listen. As he grew old enough to grip a quill pen in his hand, everyone around the house said he had an uncommon skill with his letters. He would hang around the abbey, asking the nuns to help him perfect his technique. When asked, he always said it was to write down Laetitia’s stories.

That was how they passed the many hours of their childhood. The year it rained for weeks and the town flooded, they huddled around a lantern in the highest room in the house, Laetitia casting shadows of gargoyles and demons on the wall and Michael illuminating them with his pen, the ink shining in the flickering light.

\---

When the subjects of the neighboring principality came to try to conquer them, Laetitia enlisted in the local army. Night after night, Michael lay awake and watched her train, fighting invisible enemies, tying one arm at a time behind her back to perfect her skill with a sword. When she came to bed he could see her hair sticking to her brow with sweat.

He stayed brave. He wouldn’t tell her how he feared for her. But he would pray, reading over his Bible until the spine nearly broke, hoping to find an answer for her.

She was confident as she threw her arms around him on the last day before the army went to war, a brilliant smile on her face. But Michael was close enough to see the tears in her eyes.

He stayed behind the wall of the town as it grew and towered over them, hardly letting in the sun. He relied on the reports of the heralds for news of his sister as the armies clashed beyond the wall. Whenever the names of the slain were read, he held his breath and silently called out to God to protect Lettie at any cost.

Their little army returned victorious. They had beaten back their enemies and won new forests and fields for their people to hunt and farm. But that bright smile on Lettie’s face had darkened. 

“Oh Michael, I’ve seen such horrors,” she said, and ran to embrace him. “I’ve killed men and women in their prime.”

“Lettie, your arm!” Michael wept openly as he held his twin and saw the limb she had lost. Wounded by an enemy’s sword, she explained, and amputated lest gangrene set in. Now they were no longer each other’s mirror image. But only then did she give him her true smile.

“Remember how I practiced with one arm at a time? I can still hold a sword just as well with my left,” she boasted, stepping back from him to show her swing. 

“You’ll never have to hold a sword again,” he assured her.

“But I will,” she said, wiping her brother’s tears from his cheek. “I’m a born warrior. It’s who I am. And I’ve been knighted now for my service.” 

Michael gasped to hear that.

“I’ll give my life to defend the crown if I must.” She smiled again. “But enough of me. What of you? Still writing?”

“Of course.” Michael straightened his back proudly. “I’ve made arrangements to study at the abbey. In a few years if all goes well I’ll enter the priesthood.”

“Imagine us,” Lettie said, echoing his pride. “A knight and a priest. It seems like only yesterday we were children telling stories by the fireside. We’ve come so far.”

“And yet not so far at all.”

\---

The life of a knight was a rough life. Especially with Lettie’s missing arm, she had to work twice as long and as hard as the others to learn to ride and to fight like a warrior. Yet all her preparations did not feel long enough when Lettie rode out to battle once again. 

Battling against the massive regimented armies of kings was more difficult than fighting to protect their little burg. She now realized that the army they had fought then was none more than a ragtag band.

But still she persisted, defending the principality and eventually, as she rose through the ranks, the kingdom. She sent letters back to her brother in the abbey through the scribe, and received Michael’s letters in return. 

Tales of her were told throughout the land, the one-armed knight who could hold off whole regiments alone. As the years went on, she and her trusty horse were sent to battle the monsters that plagued the land. The fire-breathing dragon, the hydra with its many heads, the great red bear with three rows of teeth and the black demon boar that held in its shaggy coat the swords and arrows of those who had tried and failed.

She fought them all. And mostly she won.

But sometimes even Laetitia could not conquer every threat to the kingdom. 

Time and hard work sent phantom pains into her missing arm. She broke bones, and none ever had time to fully set, not with her grueling schedule. They all ached whenever the clouds threatened rain. 

It was those days, when dark clouds gathered on the horizon and her stiff limbs would not cooperate to hold a sword, that Lettie would mount her horse and ride for the great cathedral. It stood upon a hill so high that its shining beacon could be seen almost anywhere in the land. The closer she rode, the better she could see its high arches and magnificent flying buttresses. As her horse scaled the rocky hill, the carvings came into view. Religious scenes and saints, heaven and hell all greeted her.

In the chapel she knelt and prayed that salvation would wash the blood from her hands. She prayed that one day she would be sent to peace.

The Archbishop Michael prayed over her and gave her his benediction. He listened to her every confession, reading from the heavy Bible that he had illuminated himself with illustrations of every color and lines of gleaming gold.

“Bless you, my child,” he would say. 

And Laetitia would look into the eyes of her twin and say, “To be here with you, I know that I am blessed.”

\---

Neither Michael nor his twin sister ever married, both of them having sworn to celibacy as a duty of their chosen professions. As Michael only served his God, Lettie only served her king. So it was that they were each other’s closest companions in old age. 

Michael often felt like a proud father, regardless, when he looked upon his cathedral. He had risen from the post of a simple miller’s son to become the archbishop of a grand diocese. Many of his apprentices and pages had gone on to become monks; several of his monks had gone on to become bishops. He had chosen a bishop named Paul to become his successor. He knew that with Paul’s kind and gentle disposition, the man would bring many new worshipers into the fold of the church. A true believer and an accomplished illuminator himself, Paul had been almost like a son to the archbishop.

For his sister Laetitia, Michael learned, it was much the same. Lettie’s young steward Mercy had grown to become a well-renowned knight in her own right. Lettie’s twilight years were a time of peace, and so Mercy made her good name less on the battlefield than in the jousting arena, where her strength and agility earned her many crowns of flowers from the young ladies of the kingdom to string on her lance.

And so, their duties done, Michael and Laetitia sat together in the highest tower of the cathedral, in the small chapel that was their favorite. They looked down over the land as rain fell upon the green valleys and fields of wheat. By the light of a flickering lantern, they were warm and safe.

Lettie reached for Michael’s hand, and he held it in his own. He realized she was shaking; perhaps with age, perhaps with pain. But she smiled.

“Michael,” she said, “Would you tell me a story?”


End file.
